Graphic Content. Many of you may find these photos & my report disturbing.
What follows goes against everything holy, everything everyone who grew up eating real pizza that we often everyday ordered by the slice experienced & hold dear.
When & since I last spent real time in Arizona in 2010 & 2011, I had read & seriously doubted the publications that have declared Phoenix's Pizzeria Bianco the best pizza in the U.S. of A. Being in Phoenix & Scottsdale again for a while now, even though I always"no way"ed the hype, I have kind of wanted to try Bianco. Bianco has 5 locations, with possibly different experiences in each. I was on my way to South Phoenix to buy chinese herbs for my shoulder and spied Pane Bianco set back in a small masonry structure. I circled around & pulled in. It looked cool.
I was so hungry my stomach thought my throat had been cut, so this accident was opportune.
Walking in to the Take Out side you have the register, and a lower cooking area, with three men and a helper working the floor and the one big oven.
There is a sit down section on one side of the wall, and it has a separate entrance as well. On the take out side, the menu on the big black chalkboards showed mostly sandwiches & calzones, but there are three Pizza Taglios, at 4.50 to 5.50 a slice. One was with fresh mozz, sausage & onions, another with pepperoni, and another just sauce & cheese.
One customer was ahead of me to order. But I swear 6 or 7 minutes passed before the guy took that order, & then got around to me. Since I had thought Bianco only did whole pies, I asked the college age kid if they sold pies or by the slice. This was when I got my first surprise. He responded that they sold by the slice, then surprisingly, told me that they were out of pepperoni, had 4 sausage & 3 cheese left. I ordered one of each
Then I stepped back a few feet and waited. A couple had waited behind me, when they placed their order the woman told the guy, we might as well wait outside, this will take 15 - 20 minutes.
And I'm waiting. People are ordering, when people ask for pizza the kid tells em how many of each they have. . Then, the pizza is gone, only sandwiches & calzone left for new orderees.. It's only 2:30or 3.
It actually took every bit of 20 minutes for me to get my order. Two slices of pizza, 20 minutes.
Out of nowhere a mid twenties waitress calls my name & says your pizza is ready. I look & by an old fashioned tight twine handle she is holding up a smallish narrow brown paper shopping bag with Pane Bianco emblazoned on it. My pizza is in a small narrow shopping bag.
Now this is unexplored territory, like an invasion of alien pizza makers & alien pizza eaters took place. I took it, said Thank you ( she responded "Thank you man!") & I took off to get outside & see what the hell my pizza in the small shopping bag looked like.
I got outside & removed one of two squarish brown packages that more likely held a sandwich.
I walked to the car, opened one package, and there was a not hot, just a little more than warm "square" piece of pizza. Sicilian. Possibly they reheated it to normal temps, then let it cool off to wrapping temperature. Since it was wrapped in kinda wax kinda butcher paper & then wrapped in brown paper there was no doubt it couldn't be hot. Or the cheese & sauce would be slipping & sliding all over the place...
Now since this was pizza from some other plane of existence, I realized this was a historical discovery & took photos of all of the evidence before I even opened one of the packages or took a bite. Photos of the bag with both slices in it, photos of the wrapped pizza, photos of the squares before I bit in.
The buffalo mozz & sausage square with carmelized onions was rather damn good to excellent, but did not knock me over. Had it been actually hot it might have. The bone, the handle of the crust was delish, the crust was thick but airy, yet, not soft.. But it did not have the flavor of a truly great Sal's or Luigi's (Brooklyn) square crust. Still I wasn't knocked out.
The regular square, tomato sauce & cheese,well, by now, it was cool and congealed. There was something about this one that put me off. Again, maybe hot like it should have been it would be good or great. I can say I didn't even really want to finish it, but I labored through & did. The crust of this one was possibly the airiest solid crunchy crust on earth. But again, this slice I would not want again.
Truthfully, I would not go out of my way for this kind of pizza.experience.
I was hoping to love it, but, it was a let down.
But I am still curious enough to go to one of the other Bianco locations, most likely the original, and hope that if I get a pie and it is served hot, it might be thrilled & delighted read more